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Do not remove this notice. 13 August 2014 1 USAGE OF SLIDES Use of these lecture slides is restricted to teaching staff and students enrolled in this course. All students who use these slides should have acquired the prescribed texts. These slides are for the personal use of students on the Study Desk only. Students should not copy slides, allow third parties access to the slides or distribute the slides. Copyright of these slides vests in the university and, where applicable, Cengage Education or Pearson (publishers of the textbooks)
13 August 2014 2 EXAMINATION PREPARATION Practice exam will be posted during final week of semester Take the practice exam under exam conditions Work through the exercises in module 8 of the Study Book model answers are included If required, review data modelling / normalisation exercises in tutorials Review multiple-choice questions in tutorials & study desk
13 August 2014 3 EXAM PAPER
1. SQL (Multiple Choice Questions) (20%) 2. SQL Queries (15%) (5 Questions) 3. Data Modelling (ERD, list of relations, CREATE TABLE) (35%) 4. Normalisation (20%) 5. Database Theory (10%)
13 August 2014 4 SQL (Multiple Choice Questions) 20% 20 questions - answer all questions If you are not sure, attempt to eliminate answers that are clearly incorrect SQL queries drawn largely from the material covered in chapters 2, 3, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 maybe a couple from chapters 4 or 5 maximum! Only the most important functions are examinable in the written SQL section but ANY function could come in this section. 13 August 2014 5 SQL Queries 15% Five intermediate to advanced SQL queries, of which the BEST three will count. You can get two wrong without losing any marks! Based on chapters 3 and 8 12 of the textbook Focus on topics such as WHERE conditions including LIKE, set operators, table joins, sub-queries, and functions with the use of GROUP BY and HAVING clauses. The following functions are examinable: Single Row Functions (SUBSTR, ROUND, TRUNC, MONTHS_BETWEEN, ADD_MONTHS, TO_DATE, TO_CHAR, SYSDATE, NVL) Group Functions (SUM, AVG, COUNT, MAX and MIN) 13 August 2014 6 Data Modelling - 35% A case study of limited scope Read carefully looking for nouns that will be entities sometimes verbs Look carefully for entities that can be broken down into categories TYPE with principal and secondary entities Often at least one TYPE but dont look for this everywhere
13 August 2014 7 Data Modelling - 35% Resolve all M:M relationships via an intersection entity Underline and hash primary keys in list of relations Hash but no underline in foreign keys Many foreign keys read directly from ERD mandatory one on the opposite side indicates a foreign key Review the structure of TYPE/SECONDARY entities make sure you place a mandatory one on the principal entity and optional one on each of the secondaries
13 August 2014 8 Data Modelling - 35% Double check the ERD and list of relations so that all entities and relationships in your ERD are properly reflected in the list of relations along with the attributes. You may also be asked to write a SQL command to create table for a relation along with primary key and foreign key constraints (you must assume logical data types for the table columns). 13 August 2014 9 Normalisation - 20% STEP 1 identify the primary key (hash and underline) STEP 2 identify derived attributes (place curly brackets around them) STEP 3 remove repeating groups. Often the biggest problem. Anything with curved brackets is a repeating group which means a M:M relationship with the enclosing relation split such relations! STEP 4 resolve 2NF where non-key attribute must be functionally dependent on the WHOLE key STEP 5 resolve transitive dependencies, i.e. where one non-key attribute depends upon another Make sure you address all the additional notes provided along with the unnormalised (0NF) relation. 13 August 2014 10 Database Theory - 10% See list of possible database theory topics on the Study Desk (under ASSESSMENT) THEORY TOPICS FOR THE EXAMINATION One or two questions may be drawn from these topics but they may not be exactly the same question. The questions will however be related to one of the theory topics presented here. Prepare by gaining an overall concept of the theory topics by reading selected readings. Try to understand key definitions, concepts, examples, advantages/ disadvantages, architecture diagrams, etc. You may be required to provide an analytical answer rather than purely descriptive. 13 August 2014 11 BEST OF LUCK!!! 13 August 2014 12